Indian government led by PM Modi today tabled the bill in the lower house (Lok Sabha) of the parliament. Amid
some high tension drama stirred up by the collective opposition parties, the bill was rejected as it did not get the required two thirds of the votes of present MPs.
Before moving further first have a look how hard it is to amend India's constitution?
In India, a constitutional amendment requires a special majority in both houses of Parliament:
- A majority of the total membership of the house
- A majority of at least two-thirds of the members present and voting in the house.
- The bill must be passed separately in each house, and there is no provision for a joint sitting if there is disagreement.
- The bill must also be ratified by the legislatures of at least half of the states if it seeks to change any provisions mentioned in Article 368. This ratification must be completed before the bill is presented to the President for his assent.
- The President must give his assent to the bill and cannot withhold it or return it for reconsideration.
- After the President's assent, the bill becomes a constitutional amendment act.
Why India needs "One Nation One Poll"?
If you follow news from India, you'll realise that elections are almost an evergoing stuff here. India like many other democracies exercise three level of political structure - the central or national level, the state level and the local bodies such as municipality and village panchayat. At all these levels, elections are required to be conducted every 5 years. But all these elections happen separately and this brings challenges like - higher expenses, logistical and administrative defiency and the biggest of all is a political paralysis for at least 2 months where the election is scheduled.
Talking a bit more about election expenditure my estimate say that various elections held between 2019 to 2023 took away more than 1 lakh Crore INR ($11.78 Billion). For this the government is suggesting nearly a 50% to 70% cut in expenses if the bill is passed and we have one election day for all political bodies in 2029.
But as usual in democracy such amendments to constitution aren't a cake walk to get implemented unless the ruling party has super majority everywhere. I'm not a fan of super majority in democracy not because I oppose this bill but whenever a ruling party exercised it in history, it behaved more like a dictatorship. Modi government is in power for almost 11 years now but the opposition parties have somehow managed to keep them below super majority from the beginning. The 2024 elections even saw a comeback of two big opposition parties and PM Modi's party and allies barely reached the magical number of 272 seats in the lower house.
Interesting days in Indian politics; I'm enjoying them but my concern is for the good things are going to be trashed now with some illogical reasoning. Now when "one nation one poll" is the demand of this era, the opposition parties in India, led by super dumbs, are opposing together that the bill is "unconstitutional", it'll give rise to "dictatorship", thus bill is "One man's wish" and like this.
Why should I waste so many days of my life looking at the list of a bunch oc crooks? Either they gonna implement this bill or I'm not gonna vote in multiple elections.
TBH, India might already be economically equivalent to China only if it did not have fools and crooks leading the country for majority of history of democratic India. I'm not against hoe democracy functions bur against those who actually are fools and now sitting in opposition.
Let me know your views on this. Does you country have "One Nation, One Poll" or it's the same as India has.
I'm posting some links of this news together with my unbiased review of this bill.
Thank you for reading.
Here are the links on the topic: